Winner of French start-up assistance competition announced

Brussels, 01 August 2002

The French Ministry for research and Anvar, the French agency for innovation, have announced the winners of a national competition for support to aid the creation of technologically innovative enterprises.

The first prize went to Stéphane Mallard for his project 'Let it wave'. Mr Mallard is currently working on the development of new technology for the treatment and compression of images for geometric representation. Such technology allows the playing of videos on the Internet in real time without losing anything in terms of image and sound quality.

Launched in 1999, the annual competition has become 'a major part of the system supporting innovation,' according to Claudie Haigneré, French Minister for research and new technologies.

This year the competition resulted in 224 projects receiving total support of 30 million euro. Over the past four years, the fund has however contributed to the creation of 350 businesses, employing nearly 2,500 people.

Ms Haigneré used the opportunity to call for the encouragement of entrepreneurship, beginning at secondary school. She also announced that she has ordered an evaluation of the 31 publicly funded business incubators.

CORDIS RTD-NEWS/© European Communities, 2001